Who's Afraid of a Few Photographers?

The Republican National Convention, apparently. Check this out. Apparently censorship is as easy as claiming that photographing a protest is a breach of national security. What's there to be afraid of? I mean, nobody's trying to get polar bears taken off the endangered species list to drill for oil or anything...

In all fairness, polar bears are the number one threat to school children in this country, as this image clearly shows.

Listen, I'm not trying to get political or anything, but when people I know get maced and then spend the night in jail, and someone decides that money is more important than life on earth, I get pissed off.


I promise to have a more friendly, bipartisan post up in the next few days. Sorry for the delay, it's been a busy couple of weeks.

Reformat the Planet

For one week only Pitchfork Media is showing the documentary Reformat the Planet about the burgeoning Chiptune scene. Don't know what that is? Here's the trailer.



Check out the entire film here. It's pretty amazing. Remember, it'll only be available for a week, so watch it while you can.

2008 Brings the Rock (So Far)

There's been a lot of really great straight up Rock music already this year, and instead of telling you about it all, here are a bunch of videos, half of which I stole from Pitchfork.Tv. Not all of these were made this year, but they do all feature music that has been released in 2008.


Blood On the Wall


Black Mountain


Torche


Jay Reatard


The Black Keys


My Morning Jacket


Boris

Graffiti for the 21st Century

Check this out.



Cool, huh? Wanna know how to do it? Go here. Wanna know more about modern forms of Graffiti? Check out the Graffiti Research Lab. They made the video you just saw. That specific page is here.

These people are on to something. Get involved.

Chart Watch: Creed

Since I started the week off with a Chart Watch, I thought I'd end it with one. Here now, is one of the most pointless reviews of any album I've ever read in my life. Enjoy!

Title: My Own Prison (1997)
Label: Wind Up
Genre: Alternative

Pro-Social Content: The Band Empathizes with a girl forced to grow up in a dysfunctional family ("Sister") and logns for racial equality and brotherhood among mankind ("One"). The Social commentary "In America" looks askance at abortion, hypocrisy, the worship of money, and promiscuity. Otherwise fatalistic, "My Own Prison" acknowledges Christ's sacrificial death as the pathway to eternal life.

Objectionable Content: Bitter disillusionment is manifested in numerous lyrics confessing misery ("Torn"), anger ("One"), and hopelessness ("Illusion"). "Pity for a Dime" finds lead vocalist Scott Stapp wallowing in self-doubt, confessing a loss of faith. "Ode" expresses self-destructive nihilism. There's also a profane use of God's name on "What's This Life For."

Summary/Advisory: Lots of searching, but positive statements are well overshadowed by an outright rejection of biblical truth. Stapp says, "If it weren't for music, I might have ended up some crazed street preacher." Rock-n-roll is my religion." Not exactly the narrow path. Keep teens out of Prison.

What the fuck? Who on earth looks this deeply into Scott Stapp’s lyrics? I’ll give you one good reason not to listen to Creed and it’s a real simple one: they’re one of the worst fucking bands to have ever come into existence! To be fair, this review might have been well intended, since Creed were immensely popular at the end of the 20^th century, and anyone trying to keep people from listening to Creed is alright with me, regardless of their reasoning. I think my biggest problem with this entry is that he’s giving Stapp way too much credit as a songwriter. Every criticism he has of this album could just as easily be applied to Pearl Jam’s Ten, which is, without a doubt, a vastly superior album in every possible sense (regardless of your feelings toward Pearl Jam, you cannot deny this is true).

Still, I feel this whole review could have been made wholly simpler if he’d just said “Scott Stapp is a fraud and a poor excuse for an Eddie Vedder impersonator, and Creed sound, at best, like the world’s worst Pearl Jam cover band. The only threat they really pose to your teenagers is to their intelligence. If you want to keep your kids out of trouble, don’t let them be the ‘Creed kid’ at school.” It’s simple, effective, and spares us from having to delve into the rather shallow waters of Scott Stapp’s lyrical ineptitude. Also, “Keep teens out of Prison,” may, in fact, be the single lamest closing line in this entire book.

Lost and Found: Neil Young

Today's Lost and Found is a two-for-one, mainly because I couldn't decide which Neil Young album I wanted to talk about. Only Neil Young could have such an effect on me. So with out further ado I give you Time Fades Away and Trans.

Neil Young Time Fades Away
So what do you do if you've just released the critically acclaimed best selling album of 1972? Well, if you're Neil Young you launch a nation wide tour during which you play nothing off that album, opting instead for completely new material. Then you release a live album from that tour, completely baffling both fans and critics. Of course, that's only part of the story.

After Harvest was released in 1972, Young suddenly found himself with more fame and fortune than he knew what to do with. Most people would probably relish such success, but Young merely seemed to shy away from it. Then on November 18, 1972, Danny Whitten, guitarist for the band Crazy Horse, died of an apparent Heroin overdose, not long after having been fired during the preparations of what would become the Time Fades Away tour.

The first album in what is known as the Ditch Trilogy, Time Fades Away finds an artist who's not only trying to make sense of his new found celebrity status, but is also coming to terms with the death of a close friend. Young was apparently drunk for most of the tour, much to the frustration of his fellow band mates. As is the general theme of the Lost and Found segment of this blog, the album, which features guest appearances from both David Crosby and Graham Nash, was a total flop. As far as anyone can tell, that was OK with Young, who seemed to be looking for a fast exit from the spotlight. Unfortunately, the travesty does not end there. Possibly due to the use of poor techniques and unreliable equipment during the mastering process Time Fades Away has never been released on CD. Apparently there's a good chance it never will be, since there's almost no way of ever recovering the original master recordings, which were already quite muddy to begin with. This is quite unfortunate since the record contains the only recorded versions of some of Young's more intimate songs including, "Yonder Stands the Sinner," "Love in Mind," "Don't Be Denied," and "Journey Through the Past." As of now the only way to Hear Time Fades Away is to get your hands on a the vinyl, which is certainly hard to find.


Neil Young Trans
Often considered by critics to be one of Young's worst albums, Trans is not the misstep it's cracked up to be. Released in December of 1982, Trans was the first of five albums Young released on Geffen records, none of which were successful for either Young or Geffen. Actually, in 1984, Geffen sued Young for failing to release a commercially accessible album as per his contract. Regardless of Young's intentions behind the five Geffen albums, there certainly seems to be little to link them, except that they're all generally uncharacteristic albums for Young.

Trans is certainly no exception. Running his vocals through a Vocoder and opting to replace his defining guitar sound for synthesizers and a drum machine, Young was clearly stepping out of his comfort zone, but it actually pays off more than you'd think. The opening track, "Little Thing Called Love," as the only straight forward rocker on the album (and the only track to not feature synthesizers or the Vocoder) is actually one of the lesser tracks on the album. Aside from a completely digital reworking of Young's "Mr. Soul" (originally a hit for Buffalo Springfield), songs like "Computer Age," "Sample and Hold," and "Transformer Man" are all very stronge efforts, and sound absolutely nothing like anything Young has done before or since. If anything, these songs have more in common with Kraftwerk and Joy Division than anything else. "Transformer Man," incidentally, has had a life of its own as it is the only track to have survived Trans. The song made an appearance during Young's MTV Unplugged appearance and has also been covered by Sonic Youth.

The Truth is that Trans was such a drastic change from the rest of Young's repertoire that when it was first released no one knew what to make of it. In retrospect it feels more like an artist taking chances and testing his limits in uncharted territories. The results are somewhat varied, but overall successful, and Trans definitely deserves a second chance to redeem its place in rock history.

Lost and Found: The Fugs

The Fugs The Fugs
No single album better encompasses the feel of the '60s than The Fugs. Not a pretty one, but an honest one. Part political protest, part hippie drug culture, part scum bag dirty humor, this album offers what is probably one of the most honest pictures of what it was like to live in a post-Kennedy, pre-Nixon America. Initially touted as the single most offensive rock album, The Fugs' second album is a dirty, raucous, aggressive in-your-face album that's intentionally difficult. Why was the album so controversial? Well, when you consider that the album was released in 1966, song titles like "Skin Flowers" and "Kill for Peace" should be a good indication. Need more proof? Here's a video of a Fugs performance from the film Chappaqua, released the same year.

When the Fugs aren't protesting the war they're trying to make the listener laugh uncomfortably, or at least amuse themselves. It's really hard to take a song titled "Dirty Old Man" seriously, which is of course the point. Oh yeah, and then there's that 11 minute closing track, "Virgin Forest." Again, keep in mind that in 1966 you were hard pressed to get a Rock n' Roll audience to listen to any song longer than three minutes. Especially one that's full of strange noises and the sounds of several members of the band simultaneously chanting "gobble gobble" (referred to on the back of the record as the "Gobble Chorus"), well any sober audience, anyway. If The Fugs sounds like artistic brilliance to you, that's because it is. If it doesn't, that's understandable, but you should probably get out more.